Is Royal Canin Renal LP better than Hill's k/d food?

Question

Is Royal Canin Renal LP better than Hill's k/d food?

Answer 1

I would say yes based on the food quality.

With Science Diet, the primary ingredient in the food is brewers rice which is a low quality grain that is by-product of the alcohol industry for which the definition is the liquid portion of malted grain or beer and may contain pulverized dried spent hops in an amount not to exceed 3 percent.

The second ingredient is Corn gluten meal, another low quality ingredient. Corn is a problematic grain that is difficult for dogs to digest and thought to be the cause of a great many allergy and yeast infection problems. I prefer not to see this used in dog food. Corn gluten meal is that which remains after all the nutritious bits have been removed. Corn appears a second time as the fourth ingredient.

The next ingredient in this food is by-products. It is impossible to ascertain the quality of by-products and these are usually products that are of such low quality as to be rejected for use in the human food chain, or else are those parts that have so little value that they cannot be used elsewhere in either the human or pet food industries. The AAFCO definition of chicken by-product meal is “a meal consisting of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidable in good processing practice.”

Animal fat is a further low quality ingredient and is impossible to determine the source. Unidentified ingredients are usually very low quality. AAFCO define this as "obtained from the tissues of mammals and/or poultry in the commercial processes of rendering or extracting. It consists predominantly of glyceride esters of fatty acids and contains no additions of free fatty acids. If an antioxidant is used, the common name or names must be indicated, followed by the words "used as a preservative".

Chicken digest is a further low quality ingredient of indeterminate source which AAFCO define as "material which results from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed chicken tissue". Fish meal, 9th on the ingredient list, is the sole quality named meat product in the food. This is too low to make up an appreciable portion of the food. We note that the manufacturer does not claim to use ethoxyquin-free sources (ethoxyquin is a chemical preservative commonly added to fish destined for meal, and is believed to be carcinogenic).

On the Royal Canin though the main ingredient in this food is a grain. Even if of good quality, grains are not a natural foodstuff for a canine, and dog foods should be based on meat. The sole meat product in the food does not occur until fourth on the ingredient list (below even the fat content). This is a named meat product in meal form, but with low placement in the ingredients listing, we have extreme doubts that this product has adequate meat content.

Chicken fat is the third ingredient. We note that research at Purdue university has identified fat in the top four ingredients of dry food as a factor increasing the risk of bloat in large breed dogs. Smaller breeds are untested.

The primary ingredients in the food are rice and corn. Rice is generally a good quality grain, but corn is a low quality grain in dog food products, that is difficult to digest and commonly associated with food allergy problems. In gluten form, this ingredient is a low quality filler. It is the dried residue from wheat after the removal of the larger part of the starch and germ, and the separation of the bran by the process employed in the wet milling manufacture, or by enzymatic treatment of the endosperm. In plain English, that bit of the grain leftover after most of the nutritious bits have been removed.Cellulose is “purified, mechanically disintegrated cellulose prepared by processing alpha cellulose obtained as a pulp from fibrous plant materials”: otherwise known as sawdust. A further grain in the food is wheat, which although not a grain fragment in this food is still not a desirable ingredient. Wheat is believed by many to be the number one cause of food allegies in dogs.

Overall, the product is primarily a collection of mixed-quality grains and fillers. There is very little meat content for the canine.

I would note that both foods are not adequate for maintenance, and are not intended by the manufacturers for long term use.